Oh, How they have Changed
by abovethepage
Summary: Everyone knows that the Winchesters have changed. Believe it or not, they used to be children. Dean used to love bars for more than just the alcohol. Sam used to be willing to love more than a select few people. This is a study of the small, less noticeable changes the Winchesters have gone through that you don't see clearly in the show.
1. Chapter 1

There are many rumors about the famous Winchester brothers. Some of them are true, and some of them are not. Some say they are vengeful gods and some just say they are simply humans who have gone through too much. Who can say the truth? It has been said that the Winchesters were always like this, angry, brutal, violent, damaged beyond repair. But if one were to sit down and really research. If one were to look back to when their stories first started, it would become clear that they didn't start like this. They weren't always battle worn soldiers. They started off as most others did, as children.

Higher powers will occasionally look back on the Winchesters past and question how they had changed so much. Angels have done this. Even the king of hell will sometimes sit and muse over how much the Winchesters have changed. He would most likely lounge at a large polished wooden table, pouring over pages and pages of information. And he would coo at Sam's baby pictures and chuckle at Dean's first few homework assignments. And although it was unfitting as a king of hell to feel this way, perhaps he even felt a certain sense of loss over the Winchester's loss of innocence. They never really did get the chance to be children.

And so there is no doubt. So much has changed.


	2. Chapter 2

For Dean, bars used to be places of comfort. His drug of choice has and always will be alcohol, that remained constant. He enjoyed the effects. He enjoyed the burn. Sometimes, he even enjoyed the flavor. And he enjoyed places where it was readily available. Sure, bars were good places to collect information regarding demons. Sure, they increased the likely hood of finding a new exciting hook up. But they were also comfortable, familiar.

He had grown up in bars. Not in any specific one mind you, that would have provided a relatively safe and stable home for him as a child. And of course, John Winchester would have had none of that. However, while they had been moving around the country, John would often drop the boys off at a motel and then drive to the nearest bar. Sometimes they were so near Dean would have no trouble sneaking after him.

Even now, he didn't really know why he had done it. Maybe it was to feel like an adult, to watch all those grown-ups toss back shots of cheap liqueur and laugh uproariously over pool tables in the back. Maybe it was so he could make sure dad was safe, that no big bad monsters got to him. He never asked for back up when Dean was really young, but he was more than willing to provide it, desperate even. Maybe he just wanted to get out of the stuffy hotel room. To leave Sammy if just for a few moments and not feel so god damn responsible all the time. Or maybe it was because in the back of his mind, Dean was terrified that one day his dad would leave to go to one of those bars and just never come back. And that it would be an intentional choice. After all, two young boys only slowed you down while hunting monsters.

And so Dean had become more than used to bars as he grew up. When he did eventually look old enough to buy drinks (or find a bar sketchy enough to serve an obvious minor) he would spend most of his time sipping a drink and watching the surrounding people. At least he hoped they were people.

When he was young, bars represented fun. They were a break from the blood and the killing, a break from the stuffy hotel rooms and tense silence of the road. This was after Sam had left and before his father had gone missing.

In those days, he spent more time chasing tail than chasing monsters. More times than not, a trip to the bar to collect information would result in something young and beautiful falling into bed with him.

It was nice if he were honest with himself, to be so carefree and in love with the idea of life.

After dad had disappeared, things had been a bit harder. Sure, it was nice to have Sam back, but it wasn't the same. How could he simply spend all his time playing pool and charming women when he had his baby brother back. And that baby brother was only staying with him because he expected them to find their father and get things done. And so he had become more responsible. Maybe it didn't seem that way, but Dean had begun to view bars as a place of business rather than fun. Chasing tail turned into chasing monsters, or at least fleeting rumors of them.

Occasionally he would fall back into his old habits. He would just look across the bar and see some young and beautiful thing sitting there. And sometimes he would look back down to his paper work, pages and pages of research, ghosts and creatures of death and pain. But sometimes the familiar feeling of the bar would make him relax. The tense lines across his shoulders would ease and the mild grimace around the corners of his mouth would all but disappear. And a few hours later he would be pressing that same young beautiful thing down onto a crappy hotel mattress, kissing down a slender neck and swallowing gasps with an open mouth before they could really be voiced.

But more often then not he would make eye contact with that pretty little thing and simply look back down. Because he had a baby brother to take care of. He had a father to find and demon to kill. It's strange how desperation and murder will suddenly make even sex look unappealing.

After his dad died... Well, bars were no longer a place of solace. They reminded his of the man he used to blindly follow everywhere, desperate for any recognition. That man was dead. And the worst thing was that by his 5th or 6th drink, he couldn't even tell if he were sad or relieved. Heartbroken sure, but that relief lingered. And perhaps it was this betrayal that allowed the 7th and 8th drink to follow so easily.

After hell bars seemed to regain some of their original meaning. It was so strange to Dean, that even as everything else seemed so broken and hopeless, the drinks and pool always managed to call him back. Sometimes, after a few too many drinks he would consider why he could find comfort in a place that so many other considered barbaric. The majority of the bars he and Sam visited were no more than holes in the wall, a place for binge drinking and unspeakable acts. And yet, Dean felt that he fit in.

Often, it was easier for him to sleep with his head leaning against the bar than on a bed. But maybe that was just the alcohol.

Perhaps this was because they reminded him of a better time. A time when he was young and relatively innocent. A time when his father was alive and Sammy wasn't a freak and Dean hadn't been to hell and back. It was mainly about hell he would think. Sure Sam was screwy and his father was no longer alive. But you live and learn and mourn and break and cry and get back up again. But hell wasn't so easy to bounce back from.

And so he would spend hours sitting on a bar stool. Not necessarily with anything to drink, just surveying his surroundings and wishing he could go back to another time, one that was less complicated and didn't involve him or angels or torture.

It was strange, but Demon Dean was what seemed to bring bars back to their original meaning. Of course, things were now bloodier and meaner, but the safety and fun was as it had been.

He would spend hours sitting with Crowley, reveling in a creatures company that he would have once found repulsive. The alcohol had been flowing and the conversation had been easy and entertaining. Maybe he would even play a good game of pool with some guys in the back, pretending to be civil and holding down the animal inside him that demanded to rip and tear. And at some point in the evening he would look up and find some pretty thing sitting across the bar. She would no doubt be a little older than what would have attracted him back when he first found bars fun, but she would be no less beautiful. And it would once again end with tangled limbs and breathy gasps.

And then Demon Dean ended. At times Dean would look back and cringe in horror. Because there was no doubt that he had done some incredibly awful things. But he couldn't help regret that he hadn't retained that ability to care less and just enjoy his time, to enjoy the bars once more. And that regret was tainted with so much guilt, sometimes he thought it would eat him whole.

After that, things tended to stay the same. Bars were no longer a place for fun, for research, for violence or company. They were a place to drink. It was a place to cope with all the pain and betrayal and guilt that constantly plagued his existence.

They were a place to drink until his eyes were drooping and his fingers went numb. Often he would find the seediest places so that he could continue to order drinks until he was borderline heaving. The bartender was trained and paid well not to care.

It was rather sad that bars no longer held any extra meaning to him. They weren't special, they just happened to have alcohol, and alcohol was a way to cope with the pain. And so he would go often. Too often to be healthy.

One day he had stumbled back to the hotel after a particularly heavy drinking session, and vomited until their was blood.

One day he lost count of the shots that had been ordered and mistook a man for a women. That part was a lie. He knew full well that when he fell into bed, half clothed and drunkenly giggling that the other body had been male. It was just what he told his brother when he had found them lying together the following morning.

Events along those lines continued to happen after that, and Dean found that he was far too tired to care.

And so bars had lost their meaning for him. And yet, sometimes, when he and his brother stopped in a town and he made his way to the closest open bar. A strange sense of peace and familiarity would hit him. It was a feeling that reminded him of softer and easier times, times where he actually went out of his way to have fun. They felt like times where his laughs had been constant and none of them had been faked. And perhaps he missed those times enough that he would continue to visit those bars. And maybe, just maybe, in time it would help him heal.


End file.
